“It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray”
Real Thinkers
“The homelessness problem is like the L.A.P.D.’s bad-cop problem”
“They need time and attention and lots of money”
“From an economic perspective the approach makes perfect sense. But from a moral perspective it doesn’t seem fair”
“The L.A.P.D.’s problem was a matter not of policy but of compliance”
Research
Tracks three individuals for a couple of months through one of the two downtown hospitals (Murray costs 100K for 6 months)
LAPD is investigated (power law distribution not normal distribution)
Dennis Culhane → Studies the frequency/length of stay in homeless shelters: Most common length of stay (when he was writing) was one day
Boston Health Care for the Homeless → 5 year observational study; 18834 Emergency Room Visits, 119 people
University of California, San Diego Medical Center → 15 people over 18 months went to the emergency room 417 times
District Attorney in LA → Cabs emit more than their own weight in pollution
Writing
He was missing most of his teeth. He had a wonderful smile.
What would you like to understand better?
Why is it so hard to fire the 16 cops with 6 or more complaints?
“But the report also suggests that the problem is tougher than it seems, because those forty-four bad cops were so bad that the institutional mechanisms in place to get rid of bad apples clearly weren’t working”
Christopher Commission’s report was that the L.A.P.D. might help solve its problem simply by getting its police captains to read the files of their officers.